[ibara]

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Who here will give up (say) two meals a week, not offer chump change to a charity mind you, but shed some of your belly fat to see that those malnourished rats running circles in place can eat more?

This is both disgusting and offensive. It has no place here.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

But wait I cant! For I must tweet & post about these problems using the same device they built... Oh the horror!

You do realize that structural problems require multifaceted responses, right? There is a benefit to "tweet & post" about these issues. Perhaps you should learn some social theory. Here's a famous article about the sociological concept of translation, which is in part one reason one ought to engage in social media.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Maybe pay your brown-skinned stoop labor $10.USD per hr to pick your vegetables?

Careful, your racism is showing. You also make the odd assumption that doing one activity (posting on a web forum) precludes one from engaging with other activities (social justice, specifically one aspect of economic justice). Which is a silly thing to say, because that is obviously untrue. I can use myself as an example. I am deeply embedded in social justice work (specifically, education and teachers) and yet I have time to write this post.

By the way, $10 isn't enough: that's not a living wage. I'd argue that a minimum wage of around $20 would be more just. Couple that with true universal healthcare, and we'd actually be able to support all people in this country.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Naw, I'm too busy trying to impress the 'troll'.

Aww... you're so cute sometimes!

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Here's another... stay after work all week & help that dark skinned janitor? Eww... dont wanna get my hands dirty.

Not all janitors are black. Again, you're just showcasing your racism.
But hey, I agree that janitors need help. A great way to help out is to support SEIU, the international union for service employees: http://www.seiu.org/

We need higher union enrollment to ensure that they can act as a single unit of power. Maybe where you work they hire non-union workers? Petition management to only hire union workers, and get the current janitors into the union. Yup, that's hard and dirty work. But you'll be an infinitely better person for having done so. And, just maybe, you'll learn a thing or two about the human beings you're helping.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Talk the talk, or walk the talk fellas?

The phrase is "talk the talk ... walk the walk": http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dict...-walk-the-walk
You also seem confident that there are no women or non-gender-binary people on this forum. I personally would not make that assumption.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

None of us here could build a mouse & thats the flat out truth. You might not like it, but that's life.

Now here's the part that you have failed to grasp: no one who replied to this thread argued otherwise. What has been questioned, and I will repeat it again, is accepting that this is true, what does that knowledge actually afford us? The framing provided by Matt Ridley provides us nothing, because he uses it to demonstrate how "cool" it is, implicitly defends the current status quo of excessive neoliberal capitalism, and makes a very naive scaffolding of "support staff" when in reality he greatly benefits from gross economic and social injustices, which he clearly is either totally blind to or doesn't care to address. This sort of view reinforces dominant power and structural inequities and I believe must be challenged.

Now, if you wanted to invoke Audre Lorde's famous essay The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House as a way of saying "hey, when you engage in social justice via the Internet all you're doing is using the master's tools" you could potentially have an interesting point. I would disagree vehemently and point to the last paragraph of that speech: "Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices." to point out what she's really arguing is that we must resist internalizing the fear of difference, and therefore taking social justice to the "tweet & post" actually helps break down that fear both in ourselves and others.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Now then, you be sure to reply using an OS you built, on a computer you built (from scratch) yourselves.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?307056-...-rally-roanoke
Take the time to understand the video and divorce the Fox News analysis.

Again, I will point out that no one is arguing that we did or could build an entire OS or computer by ourselves. Continually claiming that people have when it has now been pointed out to you multiple times that is untrue makes you wilfully ignorant.

Originally Posted by Mike-Sanders

Noam Chomsky will chime in after his book tour is over to help the poor & unwashed.

Doubtful. He, like most of us involved in this kind of work, have to trust that we do all we can and there are others doing all they can working in areas we cannot.